People can now communicate with each other in more ways than ever before. One popular way to communicate with others is through electronic messaging. Electronic messaging includes, for example, email messaging and instant messaging. In email messaging, text is entered by one user, and is sent to an electronic mailbox associated with another user. After the message is in the mailbox, the owner of the mailbox may retrieve and read the message. Frequently, a significant amount of time elapses between the transmission of an email message to an intended recipient, and the presentation of the message to the intended recipient.
In an instant messaging environment, text that is entered by one user is immediately displayed to one or more other users. The one or more other users may reply in like fashion, resulting in a text-based conversation that takes place in real time. Instant messaging environments include one-to-one “chat sessions”, one-to-many “broadcasts”, and many-to-many chat rooms and online conferences. The communications of an instant messaging conversation may include non-textual elements as well, such as images, sound bytes, animations and video clips.
The specific action that triggers the sending of the text from the device on which the text was entered to the other devices involved in an instant messaging conversation may vary from environment to environment. For example, in some environments, text may be sent from one device to the others when the user that entered the text presses the “enter” key. In other environments, each text character may be sent as it is typed into the device. The techniques described herein are not limited to any particular instant messaging environment, nor any particular technique for sending text between devices.
Conversations that occur through electronic messages, whether via email or instant messaging, are referred to herein as electronic message conversations (“EM conversations”). For both asynchronous and asynchronous electronic conversations, the conversations typically unfold one message at a time. For the purposes of the techniques described herein, even a single message constitutes a conversation. Software environments that support EM conversations, such as email systems and instant messaging systems, are referred to herein as EM environments.
Electronic messaging conversations often touch on topics on which one or more conversation participants are not fully informed. When a participant in an electronic messaging conversation sees that the conversation has turned to a topic that is not familiar to the participant, the participant will often leave the electronic messaging environment and perform a search to obtain more information about the topic. After reviewing the search results, the participant can return to the electronic messaging environment, better informed about that particular topic.
Unfortunately, the flow of an instant messaging conversation can be disrupted as participants move back and forth between the instant messaging conversation and the searching environment. For example, a user may be in a chat room where the topic of conversation turns to a particular highly-publicized trial. The user may not be familiar with the trial. To become informed, the user may minimize the window that shows the chat room conversation, and activate a browser application. The user may then navigate the browser application to a search engine page, and submit a search query to obtain information about the trial. The user may then peruse the search results to become informed about the trail. Once properly informed, the user may minimize the browser and restore the chat room window, merely to find out that the chat room conversation has long since moved on to another topic.
Even when the electronic messaging conversation is asynchronous, switching between the EM environment and the searching environment may be cumbersome. For example, it may become tedious for a user to repeatedly copy text from an email message, switch to a browser, paste the text into the input field of a search page, perform a search, study the results, and then return to the email message.
Based on the foregoing, it is desirable to provide techniques and mechanisms that allow a participant in an electronic messaging conversation to quickly obtain information about topics that are mentioned in the conversation in a manner that minimizes the disruption to the conversation.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.